John Comitis, manager of South African Premier Soccer League club Cape Town City, has said that the team has come to an understanding with operators of the Cape Town Stadium following recent issues surrounding entry to the venue.
Last month, Comitis hit out at stadium management after fans were denied entry to a home match with Bidvest Wilts. Supporters were said to have encountered issues when buying tickets at pre-allocated outlets, with the club having informed fans via social media that tickets could in fact be bought at the ground.
However, supporters were turned away when arriving at the venue after being informed by security that tickets would not be available. Comitis said that he would seek to move future games to alternative venues to avoid a similar situation arising.
The issue now appears to have been resolved. “Seems like we’ve come to some understanding as to how we will operate,” Comitis said, according to the Sport24 website.
“What we’ve done now, we have attended to the small game issue debacle. We’ve increased the size of the small game (to) slightly more than 5,000 so we can accommodate that kind of size game without having a capacity problem in terms of tickets available.
“You must understand we the pay the city according to the size of the game that we project, it’s not always easy to project it right.”
Cape Town City’s next home match is against Kaizer Chiefs tomorrow(Wednesday).
Discussing the upcoming fixture, Comitis said: “Last year when we played Kaizer Chiefs we had a 32,000 turnout in the first game, we reserved the stadium for 40,000 so we were okay.
“The second time around, midweek, Chiefs were doing that well I had a big fight with them to make it a 20,000 pack game. We had an enormous fight about agreeing to the 20,000 and we were at 19,000, so we were spot on.
“Because of the unknown element going into this game we’ve taken a 30,000 view on crowd attendance.”
The 55,000-seat Cape Town Stadium was built for South Africa’s staging of the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
Image: Maryland Pride
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